'UNAMID is just like clouds in the summer, they never rain': Local perceptions of conflict and the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping missions

Based on fieldwork carried out as part of the Making Peace Keeping Data Work for the International Community Project (MPKDW), this article considers how local perceptions of conflict dynamics interact or fail to interact with incident reporting in UN peacekeeping missions. Interrogating encounters of the hybrid United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) with local populations through interview data collected among Darfurian refugees in Chad, the article posits that localised perceptions of conflict differ in important ways from interpretations by UNAMID. It further argues that in order to effectively carry out the core mandate of protecting civilians, the systematic inclusion of local knowledge into UN produced datasets is vital for any UN peacekeeping mission.